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No one doubts that the restaurant trade is tough. The work is hard, margins are wafer-thin and customers are fickle.

But does the fact that there are more eateries closing than opening around the country mean that the owners can justify underpaying their staff?

Waiters and kitchen workers have the same needs as the rest of us. They have to pay their rent, meet their mortgage payments, put children through school; they get sick from time to time, run cars and like to go on holidays.

But, according to a Fairfax Media investigation, many are paid far below the minimum wage of $15.96 an hour – particularly in Asian restaurants, where the staff are often less aware of their rights.

To put this in perspective, university students are now charging $15 an hour to babysit. They sit on your couch, watch TV, eat your biscuits and don’t pay tax on the $70 they earn for your night at the movies.

What is more, restaurant workers are often powerless when it comes to negotiating conditions. The industry relies on the use of casuals, who are often young and inexperienced, and can be sacked at a moment’s notice.

One Sydney cafe worker discovered her employer was ripping her off and tried to have the situation redressed.

“I think I was paid $12 an hour, but I was a waitress, cook, dishwasher, opened the cafe, exchanged money, and made coffee. Apparently, the more jobs you do, the more you are supposed to get paid,” she says.

“Turns out, the owner hired foreign women and paid them all less. I brought it to his attention and he shut down the cafe the next day and fled. I went through an ombudsman to get what was owed to me, which took a lot of time, but I got it.

“I think the Tax Office was hunting him down by the time I left Sydney. It was a sad and effed up situation.”

Another woman, with a 20-year career working in top-class restaurants as a waiter and manager, disputes that workers have to be underpaid for a restaurant to survive. She says she is paid a casual rate of $21 to $22 an hour.

“I have worked in successful places that do the right thing. But I guess everyone isn’t a great business person so they cut corners. I do know of a cafe near here that has been paying full weekend penalties. Very nice people by all accounts and very busy. But they are worried that they may have to close on Sundays. Which is understandable,” she says.

“You have to sell a lot of coffee to pay those kind of wages. That’s why so many of us have accepted that some small businesses can’t pay the penalties.”

However, this woman says very few of the restaurants she has worked in actually pay penalty rates, despite employer groups complaining that it is penalty rates that are killing their businesses. Some places even levy a surcharge for public holidays and weekends, but then don’t it pass on to their workers.

“So all their whingeing is bull,” she says.

In a recent job, this woman (regarded as a doyenne of the industry) found she was being underpaid and politely suggested to the owner that it must have been an oversight. He then cut her shifts in retaliation.

“Sadly, I can’t really do much without ruining my reputation. I would be labelled a troublemaker very quickly,” she says.

The final insult for staff is when business owners pocket their tips.

“Most places will pool them and they will be divided at the end of the shift. At one place here, the rule was all cash tips directly to you and ‘cc tips’ [on credit card] got divided 65 per cent to the waiter and the rest for support staff: bar, kitchen, food runners,” she says.

“That was OK. But they didn’t pay any penalties, not even on holidays, and it was big company. Dodgy. The last place I worked at took the massive tips I was making and pretty much gave me whatever they liked – which was about 10 per cent.

“There are cameras so I couldn’t just put the cash in my pocket either, as has been suggested by so many friends. Not that I would. It would feel like [I was] stealing, even though I was being stolen from.

“I discovered very quickly that it seems that if you ask about tips or question the tipping systems, they think you are greedy. They don’t seem to understand that professional wait staff don’t stay in the business for base pay.

“My knowledge and experience is worth more – it’s hard work and the hours are bad, no matter how much you love the business.”

BRW

BY Fiona Smith

Fiona is Work Space editor for BRW, covering workplace and career issues
from our Sydney newsroom.